Corporate
SEBI's code of corporate governance -- Missing the woods for trees
WITH the SEBI-prescribed code of corporate governance added to the listing agreement, it becomes mandatory for the companies to comply with the requirements for continued listing. SEBI has, by and large, adopted the recommendations of the Kumar Mangalam Birla Committee, appointed by it for the purpose. Briefly, the code seeks to achieve the following:

Economy
US economy: Fingers crossed for a soft landing
Last week, the international financial media reported evidence of a deceleration of economic growth in the US with some satisfaction. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chadrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh examine the recent growth record of the US economy to seek an explanation for this abnormal response to what is being read as the beginning of a slow down in growth.

Food policy in a total mess
Even if the objective of Government policy is overt capitalist development, it would be impossible (politically) to transform Indian agriculture into a capitalist enterprise. Indeed, in seeking a solution to India's problems, co-operative farming may per haps be the only way out, with massive expenditure on restoration of soil fertility. The policy-makers cannot be so blind as to ignore the precarious situation created by the present food policy, points out Arun Ghosh.

Editorial
Hard up
THE GOVERNMENT WILL most likely defer to the next fiscal the move to give full Customs duty waiver for the IT hardware industry. Even preferential treatment would have been difficult to justify, but when there are common inputs used by other industry gro ups, the waiver would acquire an altogether different dimension. For instance, polypropylene used in the manufacture of PCs cannot be exempted from Customs duty unless similar exemption is available for other downstream use also. But that would affect th e economics of the petrochemicals industry, with the domestic units' claims for tariff protection difficult to overlook.

Politics
Fuelling waste
WITH OPEC raising crude prices, the Government has once again had to increase petro product prices.

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